Half a million families will find out if their child has been offered a place at their first-choice school on ‘national offer day’.
Photograph: Gary Calton for the Observer

Parents in England will find out on Monday whether their child got into their top choice of primary school to begin reception class in September, with many likely to face disappointment owing to the pressure on places in some areas of the country.

On what has become known as national offer day for primary schools, about half a million families will receive emails during the course of the day and letters later in the week confirming whether they have been offered a place at their first-choice school.

Early data suggested a slight improvement on last year’s figures in some areas. In York, for example, 94.2% of children were awarded places in their first-preference school this year – up from 92.9% last year – and just 11 children failed to secure a place at one of their preferred schools, down from 25 last year.

Last year, 97.2% of four-year-olds in England were offered a place at one of their top three primary schools. Many parents go on to lodge appeals in a last-ditch attempt to secure a place at their first choice of school.

Children are still being offered places which their parents consider to be inappropriate

Elizabeth Coatman, Good Schools Guide

According to the Good Schools Guide, the success rate of primary school appeals varies widely. In 2016-17, a third of appeals in the north-east went in the child’s favour, while the success rate was just 7% in London.

Elizabeth Coatman, the guide’s state education consultant, said: “Children are still being offered places which their parents consider to be inappropriate. Appealing is an option, but with huge regional disparities in the success rates, you shouldn’t count on it going your way.

“However unfair it may feel, the length of your school run, having siblings at other schools, super-sized classes and poor Ofsted reports are unlikely to be successful grounds for appeal.”

Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said “In an increasingly fragmented school system, we lack a coordinated approach to place planning. The government’s own figures show that an extra 654,000 school places will be needed in England by 2026 to meet the 9% rise in pupil population.

“Until the government creates a national strategy to guarantee there are enough school places for every child in England, the annual anxious wait for families will continue.”